The Cost of Astronomy - publishing fees in astronomy: Case of Denmark by Bertil F. Dorch (
[email protected]) University Library of Southern Denmark, SDU Background: What is the cost of free access = Open Access? In March 2016 The New York Times wrote that “Journal publishers collectively earned 10 billion USD last year, much of it from research libraries, which pay annual subscription fees ranging from 2,000 to 35,000 USD per title if they don’t Summary buy subscriptions of bundled titles, which cost millions. The largest companies, like Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer and Wiley, typically have profit margins of over 30 percent” (Murphy 2016). • This poster deals with the direct cost of In the same article, Peter Suber, the director of Harvard’s Office of Scholarly publishing in Danish astronomy and Communication was quoted saying that “the prices have been rising twice as fast astrophysics since 2000. as the price of health care over the past 20 years, so there’s a real scandal there to • This is work in progress – would you like be exposed”. One solution, Suber was quoted saying, “was to persuade researchers to join? to publish in Open Access journals like those under the umbrella of the Public Library of Science, or PLOS, co-founded by Dr. Eisen at Berkeley. But that financial • Subscription costs are not included (yet). model requires authors to pay a processing charge that can run anywhere from • The costs considered arise from Article 1,500 to 3,000 USD per article so the publisher can recoup its costs.” Processing Charges related to page charges and Open Access charges.